Monthly Archives: February 2003

Daniel Pipes devotes his column today to the government’s indictment last week of professor of murder Sami Al-Arian and his friends, three of whom were academic Middle East specialists: “Terrorist profs.” »

In 1991 the United States showed how it is possible to win a war and yet fail to attain the fruits of victory. In his Washington Post column today Robert Kagan suggests that France may yet win supremacy in Europe while losing its immediate objective of blocking the United States from deposing Saddam Hussein: “Napoleonic fervor.” »

As promised, Andrew Sullivan takes on the New York Times’ whitewash of Regis Debray in his daily dish this morning. Let’s quote it in full: “THE NEW YORK TIMES AND TERROR: The Times outdid itself yesterday, running a viciously anti-American op-ed by one Regis Debray. It contained every supercilious canard about American crudeness, religiosity, lack of sophistication that the old Marxist European left has now learned to deploy. The slurs »

Now is as good a time as any to think back to the debate in late 2002 among those favoring military action against Iraq over whether the U.S. should seek a U.N. resolution or simply proceed militarily along with those allies willing to join in. Those who favored the U.N. route assured skeptics like me that Saddam Hussein would quickly prove his bad faith for all to see and that, »

It occurs to me that we are seeing a replay of the late 1930’s in this sense: the Communists and the Fascists have again allied against the forces of freedom. Who exactly is it who supports the Islamofascists? The press would have us believe that antiwar protesters are a random cross-section of America. But while foolishness may be randomly distributed through the population, the leadership of the “antiwar” movement displays »

On a more wholesome note, a crowd of cheering Iraqi Americans in Dearborn, Michigan “expressed overwhelming support” for the removal of Saddam Hussein in a town hall style meeting with Paul Wolfowitz earlier today. The crowd chanted, “He must go, Saddam is a killer.” The Associated Press reports that “many in the crowd shared with [Wolfowitz] stories of oppression and torture under Saddam’s regime.” »

The Washington Post reports on the latest events in Iraq. Hans Blix has demanded that Iraq destroy approximately 100 missiles whose range exceeds that permitted under U.N. resolutions; an Iraqi spokesman said the order is “being studied,” but gave no assurance that it will be obeyed. Blix also “expressed skepticism over Iraq’s claims to have destroyed the stocks of anthrax and VX nerve agent” in an interview to be published »

Regis Debray is a former Communist guerilla who fought in Bolivia with Che Guevara to spread the good works of Fidel Castro to South America. He was captured in 1967 and sentenced by a Bolivian military tribunal to thirty years in prison. His 1967 book Revolution in the Revolution is considered a primer for guerilla insurrection. Thanks to the agitation of Communists and useful idiots like Jean Paul Sartre, Debray »

George Will on the “moral infantilism” of the European anti-America demonstrators and the “curdled arrogance” of some European elites. Will note that anti-Americanism is the “sterile response to the galling fact that Europe committed semi-suicide in the 20th century.” Indeed, considering all of the evil and foolishness embraced by Europe in the last century, the current Europe, for all its pacifist, anti-American, anti-semitic, and socialist tendencies, arguably turned out better »

Bret Stephens has a terrific column on the Jacquesbot in today’s Chicago Sun-Times: “Chirac’s chauffeur summed up his boss: ‘Sickening.'” According to the column, Chirac appears to be something of a five-minute manager. Max Boot also has a fine column in the Los Angeles Times on a subject that has not received enough attention or analysis: “Bush is solving Clinton’s problems.” (Both courtesy of RealClearPolitics.) »

The Sunday Washington Post’s Book World section carries an incredibly sane review of a hilariously deranged book on obesity. According to the reviewer, for example, the author of the book “writes with conviction that in the South and Midwest ministers are encouraging their flocks to overeat in an effort to pacify the poor. He cites as evidence a single controversial study suggesting that religiosity is a predictor of obesity. The »

This morning’s New York Post includes a column by Byron York reprinted from the current issue of National Review. The column exposes the “anti-war” movement’s tangled web of idiots, Communists, and terrorists. The headline does not capture the interest of this column: “‘Mainstream’ useful idiots.” »

The Daily Telegraph has obtained an interview with a senior Iraqi air force officer who fled the country last year. He says that Iraq’s air force has developed more sophisticated delivery and detonation systems for chemical weapons than had previously been known. “Saddam will never surrender these weapons,” says the officer. “They are as much a part of his life as eating and drinking.” A representative of Unmovic, the U.N.’s »

James Lileks’ bleat from yesterday, about the madness that has infected many Middle Eastern mosques: “I just saw a video of one of the sermons, carried on prime-time TV in Iraq. Same old same old, with a twist: Usually the text says that the very trees will cry out there is a Jew behind me, kill him. This video had a new version: even the stone will say ‘a Jew »

We have talked a lot about the two lawsuits challenging race discrimination at the University of Michigan. One of the cases, the one involving undergraduate admissions, is the Gratz case. The Washington Post profiles Jennifer Gratz, the 25-year-old woman who is the lead plaintiff in that case. If you look past the occasional snippiness of the Post’s reporter, it’s not a bad portrait of person that most of us will »

Thomas Sowell in the Washington Times explains why the liberal custom of throwing money at problems is unlikely to work when it comes to generating a liberal talk show host with the popularity and influence of a Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, or Sean Hannity. As Sowell puts it, “While fomenting fear and envy may gain votes, it isn’t enough for talk radio, which is ultimately about ideas. Liberal talk show »